Our first evening Zoom lecture will take place tomorrow night at 1930 – the zoom link is below for members only.

We welcome Mario Vallejo-Marin from the Department of Ecology and Genetics at Uppsala University, Sweden to present on “Buzz Pollination”.  

He studied biology at the National University (UNAM) in Mexico City before moving to the U.S. for a short stint at the University of California, Los Angeles. Vallejo-Marin holds a Ph.D. in biology from Duke University and completed his postdoc on the evolution of plant reproductive strategies at the University of Toronto, Canada. His first permanent academic job was based at the University of Stirling, Scotland, where he lived for 14 years. A lifelong enthusiast of nature and science, his favorite childhood memories are exploring the coast and tropical forests with friends and family.

“Buzz pollination is a type of pollination in which animal visitors use vibrations to extract pollen from flowers with specialized morphologies, incidentally transferring pollen to the stigma. In buzz-pollinated flowers, pollen is kept tightly locked inside anthers that dehisce only through small pores or slits, usually at the tip of the anther (Buchmann, 1983).”